The Devil's Dozen

Three

Sun glared off the beach. It was five days since I’d left AXE headquarters, four days since my arrival in Turkey, and one day since I’d moved on to Lebanon and the resort hotels of Beirut. Special Effects’ changes in my appearance were small but effective. I was no longer Nick Carter, but Raki Senevres, Turkish national, aged thirty-seven, self-employed. My dark hair was cut close to the skull and curled, giving the effect of widening my cheekbones. The silicone bridge of my nose sharpened my face, making it hatchetlike, and the way my mouth curled, I looked like I wouldn’t mind some blood. My one pleasure was the excuse to smoke good Sobranie Turkish cigarettes as I padded along the sand in a white robe and sandals.

Well-paid Lebanese prostitutes played with beach balls and eyed me provocatively as I passed. I’d made sure to wear a platinum Rolex and an oversized diamond ring, trademarks of a hood and a potential “john,” but the girls hesitated to approach me. Dr. Thompson really had made me look fierce. Either that, or somehow the remodeling had brought out a latent cruelty in my face.

Girls, beach towels, and transistor radios thinned out as I came to a part of the beach monopolized by the very, very rich. Red-and-white-striped cabanas lined the water’s edge. Here the international set snoozed in privacy, running out from time to time to dip into the Mediterranean. Two girls, expertly made up, topless though with tiny breasts, stopped to stare at me arrogantly before they ran back to the arms of their boyfriends waiting in their cabana. I was an intruder, their eyes said, a hood.

“If you’re looking for Mister DeSantis, he’s over there,” the thinner girl said pointedly and waved at a far cabana.

“Thanks.”

I didn’t move though until I saw the goose pimples spread over their shoulders, and the girls covered their hard little nipples with their arms. Then I ground out the cigarette in the sand and walked in the direction the thin one had pointed.

Charles “Happy” DeSantis was just the man I was looking for — resident of Yonkers, New York, president of two refuse-disposal companies, real-estate dealer, racetrack shareholder, charity chairman. “Happy” DeSantis, as he was known, was also consigliere, counselor, to one of the two biggest Mafia families in New York. He was in Beirut for a short vacation, but I planned to make it a business trip.

I felt two men approaching me from behind. I sensed they had guns pointed at my back, so there was no point in running. I stopped, lit another cigarette, and waited.

They were burly Muscle Beach types in tight bikini trunks and windbreakers, their hands casually resting on the lead in their pockets. Dark glasses and white teeth.

“You looking for someone?” the biggest smiler of the two asked.

“I have some business to discuss.”

“Who with?”

“The man in that cabana. Here’s my calling card. I’ll move my hand slowly.”

From my robe I took a small plasticine sack of white powder. There wasn’t more than four ounces, about $20,000 of calling card altogether.

The talker of the two bodyguards grinned wide.

“If you think you’re going to plant that on the man in that cabana, you’re crazy. He’d just buy every cop in Beirut.”

“If I didn’t know that I wouldn’t bring my card onto the beach. Give him the card. He can dispose of it as he wishes. Only, tell him to take a look at me. I want him to recognize me when I see him later.”

The bodyguards considered. My approach was professional, and I was making things easy on them. I was pretty sure what their answer would be. You can get ahead in any business if you follow the rules.

“What’s your name?”

“Senevres. It’s Turkish.”

“Well, Mr. DeSantis doesn’t like to be bothered when he’s on vacation, but I’ll see what I can do.”

The silent bodyguard stayed with me while the first went to see his employer.

After five minutes a girl emerged from the tent. She was a sleek Eurasian in a chic transparent tank suit, part of Mr. DeSantis’s vacation. She ran laughing down to the water.

A minute later, DeSantis came out. He was tall, white-haired, with a tennis-club build. He looked around casually as he just wondered whether the sun was out, and then he strolled down to the water to join the girl for an innocent frolic in the mild surf.

But he’d seen me, I knew, and recorded my face in his consigliere’s memory bank. I strolled off.

The contact was made.

The rest of the day I laid low. I’d booked a cheap room in one of the larger resort hotels — the same one DeSantis was in. I knew DeSantis needed time to check the quality of the heroin I’d given him. My room’s television got Beirut and Cairo stations, and my Arabic was good enough to understand a new show that announced Israel had suffered one more horrendous, fictitious defeat.

By eleven o’clock I was asleep. At one there was a knock on my door. I opened it, and a gun in my stomach shoved me half over a bureau. The talkative bodyguard held the gun and with his other hand switched on the lights. His expression was as blank and businesslike as my own. The other bodyguard was pulling out the drawers of the bureau, searching my bags and mattress, going through every cache the room could possibly offer. Naturally, he found the Astra .32 I’d taped under the night stand; he would have thought it pretty odd if there hadn’t been a gun. Finally, when the search was through, the gun was taken out of my stomach, and Mr. DeSantis sauntered in from the hall, closing the door behind him.

He tossed the resealed bag of heroin onto the bed.

“You said you wanted to talk to me?”

His attitude was brisk but showed no displeasure. I guessed why. Busy men often find it hard to do nothing but relax. Breaking in on me put an edge on his vacation. He was having fun, and he was being shrewd. His dark eyes measured me for either a deal or a coffin. It made no difference to him. And he wanted to see how much I sweat late at night.

“I think you’d like to talk to me, too.” My accented English was slow and deep but not too thick. I didn’t want them having any problems understanding me. “I am taking a shipment of the highest grade Turkish heroin to the United States.”

“Oh?” DeSantis asked with faint interest, “who for?”

He had assumed I was a messenger, perhaps even double-crossing a supplier. The night stand had a bottle of scotch and two glasses. I poured two shots in each glass and offered one to him. He waited until I drank before he sipped.

“Myself, Mr. DeSantis, only myself.”

“Really?” He looked around the cheap room. It didn’t fit with a $20,000 calling card. “And how big a shipment are you going to carry?”

“A hundred kilos, Mr. DeSantis.”

I had to give him credit — he didn’t spill a drop of scotch. But the pupils of his eyes widened a few centimeters.

“A hundred?”

“That’s right. In the first shipment. About $20 million in end product.”

“The first shipment?” DeSantis took a heftier sip and laughed softly. “You talk awfully big, Mr. Senevres. If you don’t mind my saying so, I don’t know whether I can believe you. I made a few calls today. No one’s ever heard of you.”

“None of your regular suppliers.”

“Exactly.”

“Good,” I answered. “Let’s keep it that way.”

“Hardly,” DeSantis shot back. “Before we deal with anyone we demand references.”

“My calling card is my reference.”

“Also,” DeSantis went on, “it’s impossible to bring in a hundred kilos of dope in a single delivery. It can’t be done.”

“I can do it. The second shipment may be double the first. Let me make it clear to you so there are no misunderstandings. No matter what you believe can be done, I am bringing this shipment to New York. I am giving you first bid. If you are not interested I will simply go to another family when I reach New York.”

“I am interested. What’s your first name?”

“Raki. R-a-k-i.”

“How about that? Like ‘Rocky.’ Well, Raki, I’m certainly interested.”

“But it’s too much of a good thing, you’re thinking. You look at me and say to yourself, here is a Turk with a deal that’s too good to be true. Let me define the real problem. I can buy the opium — anyone who knows the hills of Turkey can. The suppliers you called don’t know me? Fine, it would be stupid of me to announce my plans to my competition. Or,” I gestured at the room, “to live in such style as to draw attention to myself. No, the real problem is whether I actually have a system of delivery. I agree, you would be foolish to take me at my word. On the other hand, I would be insane to tell you my system in advance. But I do have one.”

DeSantis drained his glass and set it on the table.

“Everybody has a system, Raki,” he got to his feet and waved the bodyguards to the door. “Well, like I said, you interest me. If you ever get to New York, look me up.”

“I don’t think so,” I walked him to the door. “It wouldn’t be worth my while by then. Good night.”

I was alone.

My warning hadn’t been just petulance, and DeSantis knew it because as consigliere it was his fob to size up competition. The first influx of big narcotics money in the United States meant an earthquake in the American Mafia. Many powerful old families that had refused to deal in dope had collapsed. Many smaller families, buying armies of “soldiers” with their drug profits, grew great. Any family that could bring in a guaranteed hundred kilos at a time could become predominant in the whole nation. DeSantis just couldn’t take the chance of loosing a killing, even on the word of a stranger.

I made a man-sized shape under my blankets with a roll of clothes. The bodyguard who found my gun had emptied it. I carried extra bullets, and after I reloaded I wrapped the Astra with a towel. Then I turned the lights off, sat in a chair, and waited.

Two hours later, the knob of the door began turning. DeSantis had “bought” another key at the desk, as I expected. A bulky form slipped into the room. In his hand was a gun with the extra five inches of a silencer. He crossed to the bed, pointed the barrel at what was supposed to be my chest, and fired five times, five muffled coughs for five heavy caliber slugs. Satisfied, he turned for the door and walked into my fist, which wasn’t traveling as fast as a bullet but carried the padded butt of my gun.

I caught my assassin before he hit the floor and laid him neatly down. I stuck the Astra in the band of my pajamas, wound the towel into a cord, and held it between my two hands. I waited again by the door.

The door opened.

“Hurry up, Al...” the second bodyguard started to say. He said no more because my towel was looped around his neck.

I pulled tight, yanked him off his feet into the room, and swung his head full force into the wall. Just in case, I swung him into a second wall. He twitched a little on the floor, but it was just short-circuited nerves. He was out.

I emptied both their guns. The laundry hamper they’d planned to roll my body away in was in the hall. I brought it into the room and dressed, filling my jacket with their guns and keys. The boys gave me no trouble as I stuffed them into the hamper like overgrown baby twins into one bassinet. The dirty sheets made an appropriate blanket.

DeSantis had a top-floor suite. I rode up in the service elevator with a wide-eyed busboy who seemed to guess what made my jacket bulge. Before he got off on the floor below DeSantis’s he grasped my arm.

“I, too, am a guerrilla fighting for the liberation of Palestine,” he announced, and as the elevator doors closed between us, he gave me the salute of a closed fist. Which is one example of the difference between a Beirut’s hotel and the Biltmore. New York busboys never get involved.

I checked the Astra as I rose to the top floor. The Spanish gun fit better with my new identity than my Luger, and it wasn’t a bad firearm. The Astra factory imitates Colts and Walthers, and you can’t go far wrong that way. The .32 would hit what I wanted within a hundred yards, and no hotel room was that long.